When the news broke Covid-19 was rampant and Europe was in the early stages of lockdown. I was enjoying a holiday with mates in Cologne in Germany, on Sunday 14th March I was set to do my 22-mile run, as the last "Long Run" before taper I had to plan to run around a park 9 times so not to get lost.
Sitting back in the hotel room as they were out drinking, I checked my email and saw the Manchester cancelation and was crushed, a couple of days the fact that all parkuns in Europe were off (apart from back home in the UK) had me spitting nails so this was a double hit. I had to reset my goals and decided to do something more like 10k and run to the park where Cologne parkrun is run.
We were flying back on Monday morning and was tense getting to the airport checking if the flight was going ahead. Thankfully it did (Half full and very few Germans on it...)
Since then I have been doing 20 - 25 miles a week and now using TrainingPeaks to plan my fitness plans (Currently no gym work as it is shut!) It is really good at planning, giving you estimated Training Stress Score (TSS) very similar to Strava
Strava is not so good at planning, Training peaks can be over complicated at analyzing your effort, so I get a blend from using both.
The ability to move training sessions around is very cool and makes planning a breeze, I may look to set a coaching account to advise other runners on training plans.
Your main measure is Fitness, mine today is 57 based on a rolling 7-day effort,
Fatigue is something built up by training/overtraining and you should try to lower that score (easing off)
Lastly Form is how race fit you are, so as usual in the week or so before the race you adapt your training, ease off and the score should go towards a positive one. It is a tricky thing as always to do but these days you get a score rather than a "feel" for how race-ready you are.
So 15 weeks to the Edinburgh marathon and the training is full-on.
Keep running everyone
Mark
